All photos by Kelly C. Gallamore for LAist.-->Lucent Dossier is the spectacular LA-based vaudeville circus that highlighted The Do LaB's awesome Lucent L'Amour Valentine's Day party last month. You may have even seen them performing at the official Grammy Awards party (no, that wasn't Cirque du Soleil, it was Lucent Dossier). Stretch your legs and enjoy the photos below of Lucent Dossier members getting their vaudeville cirque on at the Lucent L'Amour bash. Want......

Walking away from the Mayan Theater on Tuesday night, dazed, my ears still ringing and images of brightly-colored wrestling unitards still flashing before my eyes, I was transported back through time and space to a little strip club in Montana called Shotgun Willie’s, on a hot night last August. I was sitting on the stage, handcuffed to the pole by a naked young blonde woman for what's called a "hostage dance." Out of the......

While all the local teams have Valentines Day off, some news just broke that Laker fans aren't going to love. Kobe Bryant is hurt. Bad. His right pinkie, originally thought to be dislocated on February 5th, was aggravated last night. The team finally revealed that he also has "a complete tear of the radial collateral ligament and an avulsion fracture, in which a small fragment of bone had been pulled off by a tendon." Kobe's......

Restaurants have no love for dogs, but dogs sure do love their owners | Photo by Tom Andrews via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr Steve Poizner has no love for Allianz: The state Insurance Commissioner announced a $10 million settlement with Allianz Life Insurance Company, the biggest seller of annuities in California, today in Burbank. Allianz swindled hundreds of 84 and 85 into bad deals that cost them thousands of dollars. David......

Encountered this lineup for Vanilla Bake Shop in Santa Monica. The line was 20 stylish ladies deep with a sprinkling of guys. I asked one of the would-be cupcake customers who she was buying cupcakes for and she just said, "A friend." Another customer behind us wondered aloud why there were so many women and not really any guys. I guess women are more apt to buy cute cakes for each other and maybe......

Think Valentine's Day is for suckers? Afraid of sending the wrong message by giving Valentine's cards (or by failing to)? You can still run out on your lunch break but chances are you won't find any cards as perfect(ly inappropriate) as this collection from Hallmark's Shoebox division. Because transparency (and quite often romance) in the workplace begins with a YouTube channel and a self-mocking blog.......

Mellowdrone | Photo by Todd Becker via their MySpace page UPDATE, 12:10 P.M.: We forgot to remind you that Sia is playing this afternoon in Santa Monica for free. 2:00 p.m., Starbucks, random (see first bullet in Extra, Extra list). Maybe you're going on a rock n' roll date tonight with one of these bands. Or maybe you're going to the launch party of RocknRollDating.com. Or maybe Valentine's Day sucks and you'll be joining......

RocknRollDating.com is the creation of Eagle Rock resident and music industry veteran, Daniel House. He has created the free online dating site with music as the coming-together concept. Put in your favorite bands and concerts, your preferred genres and the normal dating profile stats such as heights, sex, etc. and go find your mate based on the tunes you share in common. Or maybe you'll find someone who will let you experience new music. Tonight,......

Back in 2004, two Harvard graduates decided to make a dating website with the vision that dating should be free. Since then, OkCupid.com has gained 525,000 active users (meaning active within the last 8 weeks), climbing their way up to the top of the online dating empire, possibly freaking out Match.com, which has an estimated 1.3 million users. In Los Angeles alone, OkCupid has 54,000 registers users (including Tom from MySpace... maybe that's him, maybe......

"Lost" fans couldn't be happier to hear some great news this Valentine's Day: the show's producers have promised to complete five more episodes for this season, on top of the eight already on ABC's broadcast slate. The LA Times blog Show Tracker has the story: Now that the writers “have hit the ground running,” they know they will only have time to complete five more episodes, [Carlton] Cuse said. The show runners have a......

Romantic poetry pasted on a phone pole near Western and Franklin | Photo is reader submitted Any girl or boy who would love to have received a Valentine's Day present like this is a girl or boy for LAist's love. Above is the middle of a poem, or more accurately, number 8 of 15 parts of the poem pasted on poles around LA. It's like a scavenger hunt, or at least a good lengthy......

Photo by emdot via Flickr. Today being Valentine's Day in the City of Los Angeles, what better day than today to extol the virtues of the great City on a day when a date means so much? So, what follows are five simple reasons that the City of L.A. makes a better date: 1. L.A. goes slow 2. L.A. has many cultures and claims them all 3. L.A. is shapely (have you ever taken......

Grupo Fantasma plays Valentine's Day, 2/14 @ the Echoplex Make sure you get there by 9:00pm because the best band is on first Listen to 'Mentiras': Grupo Fantasma is coming to LA so get hydrated and they're playing a Valentine's Dance at the Echoplex.They're starting the night off so be sure to get there early (9:00pm) in order to catch their full set. Grupo Fantasma is an incredible latin funk orchestra (check out the LAist......

Arts and Crafts class at the Craft and Folk Art Museum tonight. / Photo by CarbonNYC via flickr. GET CRAFTY Make your Valentine’s Day gift tonight instead of picking through the lame leftover cards in the Ralph’s card aisle tomorrow. The Craft and Folk Art Museum hosts “A Creative Valentine” and provides materials for you to let your inner artist loose. Couples are encouraged to attend to get a jump start on the Valentine’s......

Can we now add eating habits to the long list of modern relationship deal-breakers? The New York Times published a pre-Valentine's Day article this morning discussing the difficulties couples face when their diets are dramatically different: Ben Abdalla, 42, a real estate agent in Boca Raton, Fla., said he preferred to date fellow vegetarians because meat eaters smell bad and have low energy. Lisa Romano, 31, a vegan and school psychologist in Belleville, N.Y.,......

Sometimes one is in the mood for a gathering of people with great music, but instead of being happy and energetically dancing around, there is Give Up's "A Sad, Slow Dance Party" presented by dublab and Part Time Punks tonight at La Cita. Taking cue from the successfully subdued Give Up shows where DJs played gloomy music and devotees painted tears on their faces, this next installation takes on the lonely theme in time for......

On the Pier in Santa Monica Mr. Lincoln, we like your pennies, says the US Postal service, just a day shy of his birthday. To celebrate, they announced today that postage will go up by 1 cent to 42 cents, effective May 12th. A 15-minute car chase had CHP officers trying to catch up with a woman wanted in a forgery case today. The pursuit began in El Monte and ended in Sylmar, reaching......

We've all been through our share of love-related misery, but probably most of us can look back on our teen years as the most horrific of them all, from unrequited love, tumultuous off-and-on romances, first times, moral dilemmas, and passionate moments amplified by the pure drama of adolescence. This is precisely what the folks from Mortified bring to their readers in their second book, Love is a Battlefield, assembled by Mortified guru and editor David......

Why not surprise your Valentine with a homemade treat this year? Fresh, pillowy marshmallows are a refreshing change from the usual chocolate, and surprisingly addictive. My nephew's girlfriend, Julianna, whipped up a batch of these last Christmas and people are still talking about them. Check out The Brownie Points Blog where Julianna found the recipe. It is also reprinted here after the jump for your convenience. Marshmallows will keep for several weeks at room temperature......

Got a sweetheart with a sweet tooth? Valentine's Day is just around the corner and candy is everywhere. I'm not into those heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates nor do I think my boyfriend would want to receive one of those from me - but everyone likes candy, right? It's a fun gift and can be surprisingly meaningful if you put some thought into it. When your loved one was a kid, what was their favorite......

So the big V-Day is only a week away -- and if you're anything like me, you're making reservations for a fabulous spot and forcing your boyfriend to take you out to dinner. He's gonna take me out, he's gonna express his undying love for me through the purchase of an expensive meal of my choosing, and he's gonna like it.* Thankfully, there are a lot of great Valentine's dinner options in L.A. --......

Lucha VaVOOM is "Mexican Masked Wrestling and Spicy Striptease" | Left Photo from their MySpace, Right Photo by upeslases via Flickr Maybe you’re sick and tired of being all serious, what with this “presidential primaries” junk weighing heavy on your heart and mind. Maybe you’re looking for the perfect place to take that special someone on Valentine’s Day. Or maybe you’re like me, and you’ve just always really, really, really wanted to see the......

A looming Valentine's Day is like the last few strains of musical chairs. Everyone is in a hurry to partner up. Women get a lot of advice on picking up men, but there is not much out there for the average man. Most of the advice I read for men seems like so much bullshit. It's usually just a guide for getting laid, and even that is opportunistic bullshit. The Tasha Paradise guide for getting......

Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist Found on Fairfax outside Canter's, love is lost and if Valentine's Day counts, the clock is ticking. What to do? What to do? We suggest finding that special one over a bowl of matzoh ball soup hanging out in the Kibitiz Room.......

A London vacation for $900 -- airfare and hotel? Cancun for $500? I got an email alert this morning about big after-holiday airfare sales -- and as a frequent traveler who is often frustrated by the price of airline tickets, I jumped at the chance to research some sweet mid-winter vacations. Via Expedia, if you book now and travel by mid-March, you can snag very cheap round-trip tickets out of LAX for places like......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

By day, Terence McFarland is known throughout the LA theatre community as the Executive Director of the LA Stage Alliance, a reputable non-profit service organization dedicated to building awareness, appreciation, and support for the performing arts in Greater LA. After leaving the fashion industry in New York City to attend CalArts for a master's degree, he quickly found his role as a leader helping solve problems within the experimental art school's bureacracy of BS. It......

Academy Award Nominated Short Films - A compendium of this year's live action and animation shorts. Breach - Based on the true story of Robert Hanssen who spent 15 years spying for the Soviet Union, a breach that is one of the worst intelligence disasters in US history. Chris Cooper plays Hanssen and Ryan Philippe plays the newbie agent sent to keep on an eye on him in this cat-and-mouse drama. The Boy Who Cried......

Valentines Day left you feeling dirty? Cleanse yourself with these heartwarming tracks from the cyberspa. I'd like to thank God, my parents, Rick Ruben and The Hype Machine for making this possible. Happy Mondays - The Boys Are Back In Town (Sound of the Suburb) Fuzzy sonics… Mountain Goats - The Boys Are Back In Town (Sound of the Suburb) Just as you’d imagine… Wilco - Cars Can’t Escape (The Music Slut) Clearly, Jeff......

We trust that all Angelenos had a better Valentine's Day than Cleveland's 19 Action News weatherman, Jon Loufman. While the LA metro area saw clear blue skies, temps in the mid-70s, and no reports of fat, dancing naked men, it seems a blizzard was hardly the most blinding part of Loufman's live on-the-street report. This, of course, begs the question, WWDRD (What would Dallas Raines do?)......